An Exploration of Dürrenmatt’s Use of Stage Directions in The Visit
...osite actions of the play. Although the silence is silent is accelerates the continuous actions that follows in the later acts of the play. To add to the continuous action, Claire Zachannasian’s consistency moves the scenes of the play to the later scenes. Her statements are another example of her consistency because she does not divert her goal throughout the duration of the play; she keeps her word she offered “…a million for Guellen if someone kills Alfred Ill…” (39) and later on after Ill is dead “she sees corpse, stops, then walks slowly to centre of stage, turns to face audience…she passes [the mayor] a piece of paper…” (98). Through these examples, the consistency of Claire Zachannasian is shown from the first scene she was in until the last one. Although Claire Zachannasian was a rather consistent character in the play, through the use of situational irony in the stage directions Dürrenmatt conveys the comedy of this tragic-comedy. The stage directions lend to the situational irony in the play; the audience is viewing a town which in the “name of humanity...” (39) rejected Claire’s offer, however, this is the same town which is yielding guns and buying “new shoes. New yellow shoes” (46) proving that they are counting on the money that is weighing on Ill’s life. For example, when the police man is consoling Alfred Ill he says “nobody’s threatening you” (50) at the same time the stage directions are describing the policeman as “…loading rifle” (50). These contradictions add to the comedic tone of the play and are important to the tragic-comedy. The black panther is important to the irony in The Visit, because Ill was known to Claire Zachannasian as “[her] black panther” (20). The symbol of the black panther is important because everyone in the town of Guellen is openly pursuing the black panther for instance the policeman is “loading [his] rifle” because “that screwy millionairess has lost her…black panther. Now I have to hunt it down” (51). Though the façade is that the people of Guellen are hunting the black panther, in reality they are hunting Alfred Ill. Dürrenmatt employs the symbolism of the black panther to represent Alfred Ill, when Claire Zachannasian arrived in the town of Guellen it was evident that she had a purpose. Dürrenmatt gives Claire Zachannasian the role of controller and she keeps her word and imposes the unwanted actions onto the people in the town of Guellen. The townspeople of Guellen mean the things that they are saying; however, they have no choice in the matter of their actions. Unlike the people of the town of Guellen, plants from nature do not speak; for that reason Dürrenmatt uses the different insignificant actors in the play to become trees and create the sylvan setting of the forest in Guellen. The fact that the four men “stand round…in a half circle, holding twigs at arm’s length to designate trees” (27) is important, this demonstrates the disposability of the townspeople in Guellen; and the importance of the characters’ presence in the scene in contrast to the importance of their spoken presence in the scene. For instance, Claire Zachannasian has married many times and to prove the insignificance of people when her eighth husband is introduced a stage direction is included to say “…Husband VIII…may be played by same actor as Husband VII.” Dürrenmatt makes use of actions more than words in The Visit because the audience gets a sense of the concept that in some cases people may not be able to control their actions themselves but have them controlled by higher means of power and supremacy. To convey the supremacy of Claire Zachannasian, Dürrenmatt uses a condescending tone, for instance when speaking to the ticket inspector of the railroad she takes a stance of him being “a simpleton” (18) for assuming that she would ride the appropriate train to reach Guellen. These actions by Claire creates and impresses on the audience that in many cases if money is not in a person’s possession then that person in fact is nothing more than “a simpleton” and insignificant. Guellen itself is a town so insignificant that the expensive express trains do not even stop there anymore: “five years ago the Guadrun and the Racing Roland stopped in Guellen. And the Diplomat. And the Lorelei. All famous express trains” (11). The extreme poverty in the town contributes to the social atrophy of the townspeople. Since the town is not recognized, by the trains for instance, then why the people of the town itself would be recognized? Simply put, the people of the town are recognized by t...